When you have an album title such as _Tears of Mortal Solitude_ you
are bound to generate certain expectations, so either your music is
going to be seriously miserable or -I- will be seriously unhappy.
Fortunately Forest Stream have plenty of miserable sounding riffs and
vocals, and above all the music remains sombre and majestic throughout
-- so I'm quite happy with that. These Russians are all about a solemn
blend of doom and black metal, and clearly have a soft spot for
generally well incorporated symphonic touches. Katatonia circa the
immortal _Dance of December Souls_ clearly played a major part in
influencing Forest Stream, and that's about as promising you can make
an influence sound to me -- but these Russians manage to keep their
personality intact on _Tears of Mortal Solitude_ rather than coming
across as copycats. Amidst the desolate string plucking, emotional lead guitar work
and various rasped and growled vocal approaches, there is more
symphonic black metal than on _Dance of December Souls_. The pace is
more often slow than anywhere near fast, however, and while the
feeling of the music remains mostly sorrowful, it is not quite as
extreme as Katatonia's early classic.

_Tears of Mortal Solitude_ weighs in at over one hour, with several
tracks around the eight to ten minute mark; easy chorus-based
structures are not something you will find here. Although the album
only really picks up with the twelve minute "Last Season Purity" and
the ten minute "Snowfall" (which follow a somewhat upbeat opening
track), the quality of FS's music speaks for itself as far as
justifying how a Russian band gets their debut released through
an Earache sub-label. Given time, they seem likely to produce a
follow-up of even greater quality, which is definitely something to
look forward to. Overall, though some of the synth work still needs a
bit of polishing, Forest Stream have crafted an impressive debut album
that should put a broad smile (figuratively speaking, of course!) on
the face of most doom metal fanatics -- especially those that also
happen to like a bit of black metal.